– 74 –

M. is away in London. He left last Tuesday morning and since then I have had no news from him. I am very anxious. He went because of a letter from the Military Intelligence Department who asked him to call with reference to interpreterships. I hope very much that he is successful.

Being here alone in rather an ugly little house with no news of what has happened is damnable. I sit up at night with all the doors and windows locked and wait for daylight with a hammer on the table by my side to bear me companie. What the hammer would do in an hour of need I really don't know, but I feel that to come upon a woman armed with a hammer might be damping to the spirits of the most Hardened Fiend…. The frightening thing about this little house is its smugness—an eternal, a kind of Jesus-Christ-yesterday-to-day-and-for-ever quality of smugness which is most sinister. It is a perfect setting for a De Quincey murder.

I do not know in the least when M. will be home but if I am not done to death before I'll gladly write something for the Garsington Chronicle.